I live in St. Catharines. Its downtown centre is the equivalent of two Toronto city blocks. The surrounding area is highways and the suburban landscape. I sold my car in the Spring believing I could go back to my TO ways of just walking and cycling everywhere; only St. Catharines isn’t designed for that. Every grocery store from where I live is a long walk over a highway.
Giant box stores force pedestrians to have to cross acres of parking lot to the next giant box store and then cross four to six lanes of traffic. Forget having a number of errands to get out of the way on a Saturday morning; or at least not without two or more lengthy trips depending on what I need to lug back home. The cab service isn’t too bad but I have had a couple of incidents where they just forgot me and or went to the wrong place and didn’t call me back.
I suppose I wouldn’t mind the long walks (or bike rides) if it wasn’t a treacherous noisy endeavour. In the four years I’ve lived here I can say without exaggeration that I have been almost hit by a car at least once a week. They don’t expect or understand cyclists and they don’t follow the pedestrian right-of-way rules. Stop signs are a ridiculous risk that finds most pedestrians darting for their lives.
I knew not having the car would be inconvenient. But I honestly didn’t realize the amount of inconvenience. In Toronto when I needed some groceries I’d stop in at Rabba or a few of the other downtown places and pick up what I needed on my way home. Out here, there’s none of that. In TO meeting friends for a movie wasn’t a big deal, or a dependency on a friend for a ride, ditto for parties. Though those require adjustments it isn’t that big of a deal as much as the day-to-day living.
When I first got rid of the car a friend of mine worried, “Won’t you feel cut off of everything?” I do feel cut off. The truth is I felt cut off everything (whatever that is) when I moved out here. We’ve had many people from work quit and move on in large part because of the small town suburban atmosphere. It isn’t for everyone. I knew when I first got here it wasn’t for me, and I feel that way even more now.
Filed under: Observation
